Australia’s first Data Arena powered by by nine NVIDIA Quadro K6000, with 27,000 CUDA cores lets you literally see, hear and feel data sets through 3D visualization. A few software developers from the University of Technology Sydney built a 3D, 360-degree data visualization room to help researchers and data scientists intuitively explore huge and complex data in great detail.

The room features six projectors placed around curved walls that form a round drum shape. Using a high definition laser scanner, 32 million data points are collected on one water pipe alone. The data is inputted into Houdini software – used for visual effects in feature films – which uses geometry to turn numbers into pictures, with GPU power supporting the visuals being generated in real time.

“I think it is one step up in the sense our brain doesn’t work in 2D, it works in 3D. It allows us to relate to what our brain understands better. I was able to appreciate better the space between the inner wall and the outer wall and see calibration effects there, which is not easy to visualise in a 2D world,” says Dr Jaime Valls Miro, associate professor at the university’s Centre for Autonomous Systems.

About Brad Nemire

Brad Nemire is on the Developer Marketing team and loves reading about all of the fascinating research being done by developers using NVIDIA GPUs. Reach out to Brad on Twitter @BradNemire and let him know how you’re using GPUs to accelerate your research. Brad graduated from San Diego State University and currently resides in San Jose, CA. Follow @BradNemire on Twitter